Fly your flags, for this is war
by Meep meep
Summary: We all have blood on our hands from this. Some of us little, and some of us so much we choke and drown in it. I drown, but I drown knowing that I did the right thing. Knowing that I took them with me.' Blaise's PoV war time
1. Drowning

_Disclaimer: if you don't know who owns what by now you need to take a serious look at yourself._

_AN: this was written on a coach back from Iceland sitting next to Daisy. So this is dedicated to my closest friends in Iceland – Daisy, Grace and Chris. Also to Rachel who was waiting for me back here in England. Oh! This is from Blaise's POV by the way._

At one time, I believed this would end. I can't say I still believe – I honestly wish I could.

I'm not a saviour, I just want this to end. I want peace, but when this war ends, there will be a new war. A new evil to fight. A new prophecy to abide by.

Humans are not a peaceful race, they never were. There will always be war here, always be pain and suffering. Always be evil. There's nothing we can do to change that. It's too late for that. Far, far too late.

All we can do, all we can hope to do, is prevent some of the damage. It's a hard job, harder still with the grudges people hold against us. Human nature prevents an easy life. Because of human nature, some of us will always be held in contempt. No, that sounds too nice. We will be hated, watched, believed to be evil. They have put us under constant surveillance. We have learnt to accept that fact. All of us. We are who we are – there's nothing we can do to change that. At least, not any more.

I know that war is drawing close. You can taste it in the air, tension and fear. More so here than anywhere else.

We will always fight, but this is ridiculous. No one knows who is friend or foe. Who can be trusted, who will live through this.

They have the living equivalent of darkness on their side. Death Eaters, Dementors, Giants, Werewolves. What do we have? A few old people and a load of teenagers. Oh, yeah, we also have **a** werewolf and two half-giants. Some army, huh?

We all have blood on our hands from this. Some of us little, and some of us so much we choke and drown in it.

I drown, but I drown knowing that I did the right thing. Knowing that I took them with me. Dolohov, Bella and more, hundreds more, precede me to the grave. My one regret will be that I didn't take more.

I suppose I'll go to hell, or whatever else there is. Whatever waits for me on the other side. I broke the commandments, I killed people. Killed whoever on my little list that I was told to. I broke the commandments, but I did the right thing. Is it possible, to do both right and wrong at the same time? I only took hits on the people I felt deserved to die, but I never tortured people. Not like they did.

I doubt that there is any salvation for me. For me, and for the whole human race. We're all doomed.

But to rid the world of him, it was worth it. Worth selling my soul, worth everything I've ever been through. Worth every last second.

Some people, they fly the righteous flag, display the white hats. But inside the hat is black, the flag torn and dirty.

My hat is grey, and the flag I carry is my own. And me? I am just another body for the funeral pyre.


	2. Painted Targets

In the long run, we never knew what was happening. Never knew what was going to happen to us, to the people around us. I think if we had known, even just a little, this might not be happening this way. It would happen, no denying that, but it wouldn't have been like this.

Voldemort would never have killed Potter's parents, he would have killed Potter. Or at least tried to, for the entire wizarding world save for his supporters would have fought to save him. Dumbledore would have killed him a long time ago. Draco's parents would never have turned; his mother would probably have been put away. And I would be happy. Blissfully unaware of the impending shit-storm, totally at ease with both myself and the world.

But it is not so, and I am very aware of what is happening, far too aware to be able to sleep at night, to be able to look around and not see the signs of war and pain and death. The signs that someone, somewhere out there, wants one boy dead and will stop at nothing, even if it means giving up the lives of every child within these walls.

It's never going to end. We can win this time, but next time his supporters will get back at us, a never ending cycle of attack and counterattack, a constant barrage of going-over-the-top and off into the enemy lines.

Always watching, always waiting for the next attack. The next chance they will have to kill you, the next moment where you can clearly see everything you love going down the gutter. Another moment of fear and pain in a long string of moments such as these, peppered with the deaths of the people you love.

And if not this moment, then the next, or the one after that. It may not be today, but these moments spiral towards us with an inescapable inevitability. We cannot get away from this without losing at least a little of ourselves. Without losing that tiny part of us that still believes in things like Santa, or world peace. Peace of any kind haunts my dreams, full of a hope in the one thing that will never take place. The one thing that none of us can ever truly believe will take place.

And my nightmares? There are none, no nightmares, just flashes of memory, pictures of faces. There are no nightmares because we are already living one. What we stand in is the stuff of such horrors. There is nothing I could dream of that could possibly beat this, this horrific routine of life and death, swaying on the breeze.

And so we trudge through each day, waving like flags in the winds of this war. Or rather, like targets, giant painted targets that move and talk but cannot escape getting hit one day. One day all the targets will be gone, and what will they do then?

They will kill and destroy until there is nothing left, and then they will turn to each other and destroy that. And so we trudge on, trying to stop this half-assed dream from taking place. We fight for people who know no better, who may not even know at all.

And I can't help but 'what if' the situation we have put ourselves. And, yeah, wonder if maybe we'd had a glimpse of what was coming, it wouldn't be happening like this.


	3. Happily ever after

When I was a child, I dreamt of happily ever after. I dreamt I'd grow up, be with someone, have kids and live in a nice house with at least one dog. I never wanted power; I just wanted to be happy, to be loved. I wanted to be an Auror; too, I wanted to grow up and help people.

But now, I just want the chance to grow up. Because as much as I disputed it before, I'm still a child. Still too young to be stuck in this. I'd like to marry and have kids, but that doesn't matter anymore, because unless I survive this there won't need to be kids. And god knows I wouldn't bring children into this type of world.

But I don't suppose any of that matters, really. Because I can't honestly say that I believe I'll survive this, that we can win this. And yet I fight anyway, what does that say about me. There's no neutral party anymore, people are either with you or against you. Everyone fights; everyone struggles to make it so that their side wins the war.

And above all that we struggle to survive. Struggle to make it so that the moment we're in now isn't the last, or the moment after will be the moment we meet our ends.

We're struggling to save a world that can never be saved, and that no one wants to live in anymore. And we fight and we kill and we cause pain. But none of that matters because we're fighting for a cause.

You have to think of the bodies as meat. And there's so much meat on the floor's of our new homes, the battlegrounds. So much meat that it comes up and batters us at our waists, making us sick into it as we eliminate the targets. Because the enemy aren't people, they are targets, just as we are targets. Because targets don't have families, or people who care about them. They don't feel pain, they don't hear your plans, and they don't feel it when you kill them.

Every target is painted a different colour; each holds its own flag. And every flag says something different. _We will win this_ or _please god, don't let me die_. We don't display them though, for we hide them within ourselves only to be shown when we think that this is the moment, this is the moment when we die.

And what does my flag say? What colour is my target? I don't know. I can't see my flag, and I hope I never will, hope that the moment doesn't come when I'll need it.

Each side wears a colour to show who they are with. But the costumes have become the same shade of brown, from the mud and the meat, which drips onto us, driving us slowly insane.

You can hear the animals that come to feed on the dead, howling in the forest. Or perhaps it is the creatures of the enemy, which come to kill us in our sleep. But we don't sleep, we don't ever sleep. Because if we sleep, we will dream, and we will see the faces of the dead.

They say you forget, but you don't ever forget. You just learn not to talk about them anymore. People like to hear about the glory but they don't want to hear about the horrors and the conditions. They don't want to hear how scared you were, or what you saw that's scarred your mind for the rest of your life.

Because that would make you human. And God forbid that the heroes you worship are actually human. Because if that could happen to those humans, then what will happen to you?


End file.
